Daily Bitcoin News Update

Tracking BTC prices is becoming a mind-numbing process as Bitcoin prices continue to seesaw on the chart. Since price volatility is a given in Bitcoin investing, daily price movements are better left ignored. What’s more deserving of our attention right now is how immaculately Bitcoin is beginning to right itself.

Bitcoin’s glaring imperfections are beginning to recede into the background hours after the new Bitcoin update has taken effect. For reference, Bitcoin’s core code was upgraded this week to fully integrate “SegWit.”

In the last 24 hours, SegWit-based transactions have seen an unprecedented jump. Historically, SegWit constituted an average of 13% to 15% of transaction volume. As of now, SegWit adoption has encroached nearly 30% of transactions—a number never seen before.

At the rate Bitcoiners are espousing this upgrade, we won’t be surprised if we close the week with SegWit-based BTC transactions culminating in excess of 50% of all transactions. (Source: “Transaction percentage,” SegWit Charts, last accessed February 28, 2018.)

In case all this commentary is Chinese for you, the simplistic explanation is that Bitcoin coders have just fine-tuned Bitcoin’s out-of-date technology, which will now allow for swift transaction validations. The technical improvement afforded by SegWit is making the updated Bitcoin a whole lot cheaper and faster than its former slow, expensive, antiquated version.Chart courtesy of TradingView.com

Take note that the SegWit soft fork was introduced about three years ago but was never implemented as it generated skepticism in the developer community. In fact, disagreements over SegWit adoption ultimately led to the Bitcoin hard fork, which gave us Bitcoin Cash (BCH)—a Bitcoin clone purporting to be the “pure Bitcoin.”

Although part of the developer community remained at odds with SegWit, the majority of the investor community has been on the same page on this issue. Investors have been looking forward to SegWit adoption since forever.

And, as we confirm from Bitcoin’s daily transactions history, investors are, in fact, embracing SegWit with open arms. In the past 24 hours, Bitcoin’s transactions as a percentage of its market cap have soared to 5.78%, close to Litecoin’s 5.96%. (Source: “Bitcoin, Litecoin Sent in USD historical chart,” BitInfoCharts, last accessed February 28, 2018.)

In other words, the unique edge Litecoin enjoyed against Bitcoin as a cheaper and faster digital medium of exchange is slowly being reseized by Bitcoin.

Analyst Take

Bitcoin skeptics have been bashing it for having lost its touch as a digital currency. To them, Bitcoin has no utility except as a store of value. That, too, has been in question because of its price volatility.

But following the SegWit integration, we foresee the mighty Bitcoin gradually reattaining its lost status as a viable digital monetary alternative to fiat currency. The trend bolsters our Bitcoin price forecast for 2018 that sets the BTC price target at $15,000.